Doors of Perception
by LifeInABox66
Summary: The greatest threat to order is not evil, but subjectivity. Boundaries must be breached and God's protection must be discarded. Gradually, led by his own, personal devil's emissary, Ryou ventures into the chaos that lurks behind the simplified structure.
1. Chapter 1

**A/N: Scroll down, and you'll find this fic to be written in first person. I know. No, don't hit the back button yet. I can explain. Believe me – I love third person/present tense/limited as much as the next person: it allows the writer to be close to the character's thoughts, but also gives a certain amount of distance. Which is precisely the reason why I didn't want to use it for this fic. It would be making Ryou into the host again: a vessel through which the author speaks. I wanted to give him an authoritative voice, for once. **

**Whilst I'm getting into this **_**apologia, **_**I may as well explain something else. This is based around one of those **_**what if **_**notions. To wit: what if Ryou had been more than simply partially complicit in Bakura's schemes? A simple premise, but one which raises a number of issues. **

**The title, by the way, is taken from Blake's **_**The Marriage of Heaven and Hell. **_**You can probably see where this is going: i.e. Tendershipping. **

**With that established, it's probably about time we got started. **

* * *

In every cry of every man,  
In every infant's cry of fear,  
In every voice, in every ban,  
The mind-forged manacles I hear

- William Blake, _London_

**Doors of Perception**

_Dear Amane,_

_Guess where I am right now? A madman's castle. No – I'm kidding, don't worry about me; Pegasus isn't mad, just strange. But I keep feeling that the description holds true nonetheless. There's a lot to tell, but at the moment I'm finding it difficult to sort it all out in my head. Particularly when my head isn't really the safe place I once thought it... you know what? There are too many ideas in my mind right now, all knotted into a big, tangled mass – and writing about them is like trying to single out one particular thread at a time when they're all clumped together. _

_Can I get back to you once things are calmer up there?_

When I was a little kid, I used to believe so fervently that Amane was alive in heaven, voraciously reading my daily letters for news of the prosaic bustling of earth that I knew she would miss so very much. Writing had a definite air of magic to it: communication which transcended space, time, death. Later, that earnest belief all but dissipated alongside the beginnings of adolescence and, concurrently, scepticism. The letters became less of a two-way thing and more of a diary – and yet, I still felt a connection pulsing between existence and its opposite, even if it was weaker, formed on a more ambiguously spiritual sort of basis. I could no longer picture her receiving envelopes via celestial mail slot, settling down on a nearby cloud to read the contents whilst brushing stray vapours out of her hair. Instead, she rustled through the air around me: ubiquitous, atomised and somehow still capable of comprehending on a more intuitive level what I wished to say to her.

Dad knew all about it, even if her pretended not to in the earlier years, for fear of bruising my eleven-year-old feelings any further. Later, he would tease me about my apparent lack of ego: I couldn't even write a diary without addressing it to someone else.

Maybe there is a scattering of truth in that, even if I still maintain that they were letters, not glorified autobiographical material. I do feel uncomfortable saying 'I' even now - really I'd prefer to write 'Ryou' instead. 'Ryou did this', 'Ryou said that'; would that be a better way of telling you this story? Just say the word and I'll swap. It's no trouble, really – it'd be a relief. No? Well, all right – I'll do my best.

This isn't a story about me, though. It's about _him. _Well, OK – it's more about his effect on me, though that's much the same thing. I'm sorry I can't be a better narrator; there are many incidents to which I was not privy: blurred at the edges, or obscured altogether. You already know the story, so that helps. What you want to hear is _his _side. I'm not the best person to supply that, really – but I'm the only one willing and able. So here we go; I'll do my best, and please excuse any vagueness on my part. What memories I _do _retain are all very vivid and clear in my head, but thought can be deceptive, surreptitiously filling in crucial gaps with blankness, so that you don't pay any attention to the missing material until you have to talk about it and you realise there's much that's missing.

That said, you want to hear what I _do _have to say, right? Well, I'll give you the scenes you never saw – what I experienced of them, anyway – and perhaps you'll be able to make a judgement in the end.

Shall we, uh...?

Ryou lay on his stomach, on the bed, pen bleeding into the thin paper whilst he tapped it repeatedly against the unyielding blankness.

... What?

Oh. Oh, all right. _I _lay on my stomach, on the bed, attempting to write, whilst the shadows collected furtively around me. No use. I wasn't making excuses with regards to the state of my head. So I rolled over and reached for the book I had placed on the bedside table instead; if my qualms could not be silenced, they could at least be temporarily suppressed. A shape caught the corner of my eye, and I paused to glance at the chair at the edge of the room.

The _occupied _chair at the edge of the room.

It scarcely occurred to me that I ought to be surprised, and he seemed a little perturbed by the fact that I wasn't.

He made up for it with a slender, spreading smile that I now know was calculated. At the time, it simply seemed further evidence of his unassailable composure.

"Host." A flippant, hollow greeting – a twisted parody of the casual.

"Spirit." Because, beyond the obvious choice of noun, there was little else that could be said.

"You're wary," he noted, curled catlike in the armchair. His hair was splayed against the jutting bones of his shoulders – a stray kitten with a viper's eyes.

"You ought to be expecting that." I sat, spooked, transfixed, like seeing a spider skitter across the room and _pause, _and being unable to move and disrupt the mess of fascination and repulsion. (I like insects. I like bats. I like catfish, and Komodo dragons, and scorpions, but there is nothing in the world like a spider and I have never been able to wrap my head around that.)

"Still bitter about before?" He flexed his bare toes, as though teasing out numbness, and I wondered how long he had been there, curled up, animal and inconspicuous. "I thought I had atoned."

"You tried to -! You know what you tried to do." The evidence was stacked against him, so I felt little need to reassert it. This was a mistake. He took my reticence for lack of argumentative ammunition, and confidently proceeded to take the initiative.

"Let me do penance then." Now lolling sideways across the arms of the chair – the way my parents always told me not to, as they are more fragile than they seem – it was difficult to imagine a more unlikely penitent.

I tore my gaze away and screened it with the book, arbitrarily turning pages with a pointed rustle.

I heard motion; he seemed to straighten and sit up. Secure in the knowledge that I would not resist by recounting various known misdeeds. I had no choice but to maintain a frustrating silence, for any attempt to recapture lost ground would seem like insincere protestation. A little nuance to our dealings that probably altered the chain of events; I did not bite back with the obvious. _You tried to kill my friends. _(And it would have been simple to say, but too late.) I was, for the moment, ensnared as a result.

"Good book?" he inquired, voice as light as the brush of soft fingertips.

"I can't tell," I hissed, face still shielded, conscious of the possibility of being overheard from next door. (He _never _had to worry about that sort of thing – I always had to handle the technicalities; even when he was in control, he didn't care.) "You're distracting me. My eyes just slide off the page."

I heard him sniff, delicately: _irritation duly noted. _

"Would you just – _go?_" The last word was swallowed by the sudden swirl of air as he stood. I peered over the edge of the book. He had not moved much closer – he seemed anxious to keep his distance. I think he might have even believed it was courtesy.

"Let me read it."

I blinked at him, deliberately unresponsive. It might have been a challenge.

He certainly took it that way. "Let me read to you," he said, enunciating each word with low precision.

"... Why?"

He raised an eyebrow. "Doing penance. Anything to regain your trust."

"You never _had _it. Don't try and steal retrospectively."

That made him smile, although I did not know why at the time. "We had a false start," he said. "Why don't we begin again? Think of me as an imaginary friend." I snorted at that. He shook his head, impatiently. "No – I mean it - when have I ever intended to harm you?"

I stretched my arm out, pointedly.

"Self-infliction doesn't count," he smirked.

"I'm pretty sure I could make a good case for duress," I muttered. But I allowed him to continue.

"Besides, how do you know I'm not you? That my actions were not just your subconscious wishes, given hideous living form?" He was laughing outright now. A harsh, deep scrape of a sound.

"No," I answered, firmly. "No, I'm almost certain you're not." He fell silent, and his eyes gained a glimmer of interest.

"Explain."

"I spent an awful lot of time thinking about it, and I came to the conclusion that I have never once, even secretly, wished that I could keep my friends sealed forever in little doll figurines. Don't start laughing again; I know it sounds silly, but listen anyway. In reality, friendship has always seemed like it's built out of feathers, but that's what makes it so wonderful: they could blow away any second, and you find joy in every minute they don't. So it actually rather spoiled it." I sat up, drawing an arm around my knees. "You're not me, or my shameful desires. I probably have as many as the next person, but you don't resemble them. You're from outside, not inside."

"Like a parasite," he answered, chillingly. "Very good."

"I'm right, aren't I?"

"Up to a point. Now will you let me read to you?" He still hadn't budged from where he stood. The metres between us did not seem protective exactly, but I was grateful for the distance. "Toss me the book. Otherwise you'll never be able to sleep."

"Can you even – touch it?"

That caught him off balance. "No, you're right," he mused, a little perturbed. "You'll have to prop it against the chair arm instead."

"And what about turning the pages?" I knew when to relent. "Look, just come sit over here, next to me – there's room – and I'll hold the book. You read. Don't try to make it so difficult."

Again – surprise registered on sharpened features. "Are you certain?" Residual annoyance from the unwanted reminder of his incorporeality lingered in his tone.

"You said you wouldn't harm me," I shrugged.

Reluctantly, he settled next to me.

Strangely, I felt heat, and solidity. "Why can I -?"

He tapped me on the arm with a hand like anyone else's. "All in the mind, isn't it?"

"Huh. Suppose so."

"Shall I begin?"

"All right."

""_You fill me with in-fin-ite revulsion," he shouted. "Pure un-a-_dul-_ter-a-ted loathing. I'm getting out of here before I murder you!" He wheeled away from..." _Host, what _is _this?"

"_Sophie's Choice. _It's about a woman who survives a Nazi concentration camp and slowly breaks down into depression."

"Hn. I think I like it. Nice... prose style."

"Come on – read. If you must."

He complied. It was funny how what had started as a gesture from him had turned into a favour from me. It was a peace offering nonetheless. As he read, I sank back into the pillows, holding the book at a haphazard angle by which he could read. Closed my eyes. He would give my arm an impatient tap when he wanted me to turn the page, which I would do blind. It was relaxing, funnily enough, to hear him read aloud in his high, abrasive, resonant voice – stumbling over the occasional word, or misplacing a syllable here and there.

You mustn't think it was all that comfortable. Not at first. Being read to was nice, something of a nostalgic luxury, reminding me of lazy evenings spent listening to my parents alternate reading chapters aloud, and of arguing amiably with Amane over the choice of book. Which is not to say that it brought me back to that time – in fact, it made me acutely aware of the weight of the loss and the hollowness of the substitute. As the words washed over me, like the stumbling ebb and flow of an erratic tide, I considered ghosts. When I lifted my lids enough to see white through a mesh of dark eyelashes, Bakura looked like a spectre.

"I wouldn't have expected you to be reading something so dismal, host," said Bakura, disdainfully, breaking off a few sentences away from the end of a chapter. Inconsiderate, really. It would not have mattered either way if he had taken the time to reach a more logical concluding point - but I would have preferred it. Not that I was lucid enough to consider the issue thoroughly.

"'S'not like that. It's... beautiful," I murmured, through a thick haze of sleep.

"Shall I go on?"

I took my time to process the thought. For a moment, the sheer oddity of my position assaulted me. The spirit, a close and solid presence beside me. Myself – listening to every borrowed word with avidity. An author's thoughts as our unreliable conduit. The proximity of it all threatened to crush me with the weight of its implications.

I sat, abruptly, causing the spirit to flinch.

"A-actually I'm going on a walk. To – uh – clear my head."

He shrugged. "Back to solitary confinement, then," he said, indicating the Ring which hung about my neck like a leaden shackle. He must have detected some hint of apology in my features, for he added: "Not to worry. For the moment, I'm yours to command."

"I doubt that," I said, standing, uneasily. (Tiredness attacked the corner of my vision, but I brushed it away with movement.)

"Host, have I _ever _lied to you directly?" He said it seriously – gravely, even – but the _directly _qualification was not entirely lost on me.

"I'm going," I said, firmly.

"Don't fall over," he smiled, noticing how I gripped at the wall for balance in the dark.

I aimed a withering look at him as he melted back into the Ring.


	2. Chapter 2

**A/N Damn, I forgot to mention this is manga-based. Well, there you go. Manga-based. Enjoy!**

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**

"Well – that was an eventful evening, hmm?"

He had been whispering to me constantly the entire time; a bitter little mocking commentary in my ear, like insidious poison, ensuring that I could only half focus on the conversation around me. Trapping me in a separate little square of being. Some of his words were even vaguely _funny, _and I occasionally found myself suppressing a non-sequiter giggle. I wished he would return to being loathsome, an easy target of unthinking hate – but the uncomfortable fact remained that I could no longer summon up the requisite resentment for that. I was finding it difficult even to dredge up enough distrust to – well, to avert what was gradually happening: an inexorable wave of events. Dominoes.

Do you think it would take an awful person to have given up on hostility so quickly? It _all _happened so quickly – I suppose that's my one defence. It's the only one I will allow you to apply to me. Don't say I was brainwashed, or seduced. Just, please, judge me according to what I say. I'd like your judgement. I'm a little sick of people making allowances, using excuses I never possessed. Even _he _did that.

But I'm skipping ahead, and I'm sorry about that. This isn't about me. You came here to talk about him. Trouble is, there's so much of _me _in the way.

He flopped onto the couch, leaving no imprint on its surface, but eliciting a faint rustle nonetheless.

"Eventful?" I repeated, incredulously.

He shrugged. "Helicopter was stuffy," he grumbled, a little more subdued now, as though hurt I had not responded to his odd jocularity in kind.

I took a tentative seat next to him, at the edge of the couch just a few inches from his feet.

I decided I was going to be assertive. "I have some questions for you," I began.

"All in good time, host," he drawled, lazily, looking up at me from where he reclined against the bolster.

"And if I want answers _now_?"

He chuckled, low and appreciative. "Much as I love it when you show some degree of assertiveness, when and where you want answers is irrelevant."

I looked away, and had to acknowledge the point. I had very little say or leverage over his actions or words; I ought to be pleased that he now seemed at least moderately benign. Save for that dangerous edge to his eyes – I decided to overlook that. Ditto the cold, steely contours of his expression that I would later register as one of his milder looks of annoyance.

"So, host," he said, straightening to sit upright with sudden force. "Now I'm bored. Be entertaining, would you?"

_Well! _Spurred by a further surge of unprecedented recklessness, I said: "Let's play a game. Twenty questions? Then I can guess who or what you are."

His face _changed _– modulated into something suggesting a far deeper form of menace. "_No games,_" he snarled, the force of the words nearly driving me backwards into the wall.

This was the second of our soon-to-be-habitual little power struggles (the first being infinitely more spectacular, with a greater proportion of stabbing). The first, I had almost certainly won, at considerable cost. In all fairness - on pure consideration of the odds - it was about time I should begin to falter, particularly whilst lacking the support or presence of my friends. So... well. I forced myself to concede defeat with a modicum of grace, if not partial defiance. "Well, I don't have time to be _entertaining_ – I have homework I need to catch up with. Sorry, spirit. Real life calls."

His face resolved back into what I now knew was just veneer, not even _good _veneer. I had seen the savagery behind it, and I would take care to keep it in mind.

I wasn't scared, either.

He rose, and followed me as I attempted to exit the room. Still keeping his distance, I noticed – he did not even allow his shoulder to brush mine, not even briefly, as he moved to match my pace.

"Don't be like that," he wheedled, reproachfully. "Didn't I say I'd never harm you? Not just because it would be disadvantageous; I actually rather like you."

"So you've said." I stopped, nonetheless. He moved to face me, about a neat metre away. At this point, we were positioned on either side of the living room doorway; it acted as a physical frame, may as well have been the edge of a mirror. Never had my own reflection smirked so shamelessly.

"I'm still atoning for previous transgressions, I see," he said, in a mockery of ruefulness, softening the sharp corners of his words into a gentler sibilance.

"Evil doesn't atone," I insisted, borrowing some of his own harshness.

"Evil?" Again, that _chuckle. _Like a miniature of his habitual, crazed cackle. "Sometime I'll have to teach you the truth about evil."

The statement did not sound quite as ominous as you would expect – or as he probably intended. It seemed more like an offer of schooling.

Either way, he clearly had no intention of leaving me in peace. "Look, you're bored," I said, briskly. "That I gather. How about _I _read to _you_?"

He blinked, wrong-footed. Clearly he had been expecting to harass me for hours before I acquiesced. The recovery was swift, though. "Go on, then," he said. "Give me poetry – something high-blown and moralistic." He gave a flippant, yet grandiose wave of the hand. "I'll try to refute it."

Call it perversity, this impulse to poke at the slumbering fiend, but after fumbling my way around the bookshelf, I chose the volume best calculated to irritate him the most. I stepped to the centre of the room, feeling both daring and somewhat foolish. Playing angel's advocate.

"_Batter my heart, three person'd God, for you  
As yet but knock, breathe, shine and seek to mend."_

"Ah, masochism. A promising start," he snickered, leaning by one arm against the door frame. "Piety, hmm? I have a lot to say on piety. The uselessness thereof."

"_That I may rise and stand, o'erthrow me, and bend  
Your force to break, blow, burn and make me new."_

"Destruction. Yes," he said, darkly. "Your poet is making a virtue out of tyrannical necessity."

"_I, like an usurp'd town to'another due,  
Labor to'admit you, but oh, to no end;  
Reason, your viceroy in me, me should defend,  
But is captiv'd, and proves weak or untrue."_

"Human grovelling. The absurdity of it, host!"

"_Yet dearly'I love you, and would be lov'd fain,  
But am betroth'd unto your enemy;  
Divorce me,'untie or break that knot again,"_

"And from whence springs such love of servitude?" he asked, with faux portentousness. "I'll tell you where."

"_Take me to you, imprison me, for I,  
Except you'enthrall me, never shall be free,"_

"Ooh. Fetishising the deity. How very risqué."

"_Nor ever chaste, except you ravish me."_

"Ravish...?" He leaned further back, incredulous. "Landlord, I _do _worry for your reading material."

I closed the book with a prominent snap. "John Donne: _Batter My Heart. _And that wasn't refutation. That was just a snide commentary."

He moved back into the room, circling me in long, pensive strides. "I haven't started yet."

"Then I'm interested to hear more."

He kept circling. Hyenas, vultures, sharks, all sprang to mind.

"To begin with," he said, "your poet idolises his oppressor. I was correct: masochism lies at its heart. Wilful, no. Unconscious defence mechanism, yes."

"Expound, please."

Yet again, the laugh. "People seek beauty in what is terrible. It's a method of self-preservation. Call tyranny glorious, and just, and you can live your pathetic life in comfortable quietude. Who questions beauty? _Just look at the pretty King on the throne of sparkling gold. _No matter that he's an autocrat, that his hands are stained with the blood of a thousand slaves. It's the same with God: God, the ineffable; God, the sublime! All that radiance obfuscates corruption."

I shifted from foot to foot; his very words seemed slightly dizzying. "Why?" I asked, cutting through the blur of doubt that he had expelled. "What's corrupt about it? And why would people choose to hide from it?"

"In answer to the second question: the safety of ignorance. If you _can _believe the order of things is natural, and right, why choose disillusion? Safer to revere a ruler than to despise and, in turn, be despised. As for the first: any God implies a moral absolute. God must have absolute authority over his creation. Worship is just a cycle of mortifying deference. Faith is a synonym for enslavement." He attacked each word, firing phrases like arrows at some invisible, omnipotent foe.

I bit my lip. "Maybe you might have been right back when the poem was written. But people are hardly slaves nowadays."

His lip curled. "Oh, aren't they, host?" he rejoined, sardonically. "Maybe not to God. Not everyone. But the principle remains identical. Substitute 'deity' for 'politician'. For 'employer'. For 'ruling class'. In every society, there are rulers – and, consequently, subordinates. And it's all based on nothing but greed. You'll tell me in that singsong, naive way of yours that laws are there for a purpose, and that hierarchy is necessary for social order. Well, with social order comes oppression. God in heaven, Kings on thrones – and their successors, the ruling class of today - will stress their own, stringent moral code. They'll punish the wrongdoers. And what gives them authority? The fact that they happen to be in authority. Circular logic, host. Enter someone with different ideas, a different code – or no code whatsoever – and they panic. All hell breaks loose, so to speak. They're terrified precisely because they know – have always known – that, when it comes down to it, nothing differentiates the angels from the demons."

All throughout, he paced the room, never once lifting his eyes from mine. Fixing me where I stood, they seared into my line of vision: permanent sparks of glaring crimson. His voice was harsh and hypnotic, and I could not have blocked it, even had I the inclination to try.

He had an enthralling ability to tear great chunks from one floating, elusive mass of ideas, and cut them into neat little epigrams, short and seductive. I distrusted the craftsmanship. It was all too regular. Yet, try as I might – and, admittedly, I did not try as much as I ought to have done – I could not find the weak point in the work. I knew it must exist – and that a firm tap at that same spot would be enough to send the structures crumbling into a heap of tautological dust.

A smarter person than me could have persevered, engaged him on his own territory. As it was, I mutely replaced the book in its dusty slot on the shelf.

"Homework time," I said, firmly. "Don't look at me like that. Got to appease the autocratic rule of the despotic Maths teacher." I tried to infuse the words with a lightness that I could not feel.

"You don't _have_ to do anything," he stated, mildly. "You could step outside the structure." The very simulacrum of temptation. His face was alive with all sorts of intriguing possibilities. Far too intriguing for comfort.

"I don't want to hear any more, for the moment," I said, waving my arms in front of me as if to ward his influence away. "I _feel_ you're wrong - but I can't know it. We'll talk later."

"I hope that's a guarantee," he said, with a touch of fondness. "You make for a decent audience."

That, I believed.

* * *

I think he liked to read things aloud. Later, when I knew a few more of the details, I decided it made sense. Trapped within your own mind, with a couple of ancient monsters for company, what is there to do but scream, and yell, and roar for the purpose of hearing your own voice – if only to check it still survives? Tree falls in a forest. Soul cries in the shadows. As an audience, I was living confirmation of his existence.

At the time, I just thought it must have been dreadfully lonely, existence in that Ring. Which was probably why he spent as much time outside it as possible. And probably why I let him.

In a sense, it didn't matter what he said so long as he could reassure himself he could still say it. Didn't matter to him, that is.

It mattered a great deal to me.

I would drink in his arguments, gulping down what I had first perceived as poison as though it was life-giving medicine. And I would protest, at times, if only to preserve the flow of discussion – but wasn't convincing either of us.

Or perhaps at times I convinced him. Burdened by sanctimonious dogma: that's how he saw me. I never once managed to fool myself, at any rate.

We would watch films together, too. Why are you laughing? Oh, I see. Yes, I suppose it _is _a little incongruous, isn't it? But, you see, I was an ordinary person and he wanted to investigate that – perhaps to read me through my mundane preoccupations. He'd tire of that route abnormally quickly; I don't think he could ever sit quietly and watch without putting up a fight against passivity. So he'd talk consistently throughout the film – continuous little asides which I'm sure he thought were funny. And, all right, they sometimes were. In truth, I didn't mind at all; the experience wasn't so much _watching _the film, or _reading _the book as it was discovering what he would take from it, how he would twist it. He seemed to find everything I showed him deeply objectionable, but I knew he enjoyed the process of deconstruction: he would extract a new, gleaming gem of philosophy from every humdrum aspect.

And still, he would keep his distance, leaving the gap between as perpetually uncrossed. He was in the process of building the bridge, but it was my job to walk to the other side.

We were sitting at either side of the couch, gazes resting lightly on the TV.

"This," said Bakura, contemptuously indicating the screen, "This, is the lurid patina on the glass of your little snow-globe world." He paused, not for thought, but probably for dramatic effect. "This is the pile of freshly cut flowers on a freshly covered grave_. _This is the necklace of the tyrant which gleams in the light of its reflected splendour, blinding its fatuous worshippers."

'This' was a harmless-looking sitcom.

"You're saying it's a distraction?" I asked, tiredly.

Yes. Yes, he was.

"That's the point. That's its _purpose. _Everything ordinary – every tiny embellishment of normality that you think you overlook – it's all a distraction. Pretty lights. And whilst not all of it is calculated, a large amount of it is. Can't have people focussing on the real ugliness, after all. Best to keep them praising the grotesque."

I gave a little murmur of a yawn. "How can you say the ugliness is real? Who's to say it's not another front?"

"Why hide it if it's illusory? Examine the surface of everything, host. If something dark and warped dwells beneath – that's the truth. The more heavily it's shielded, the more important it is that you don't guess."

"And what if there's beauty hiding beneath?"

"Again – fairly idiotic to hide it."

"You're just _guessing._"

"It's not all surmise. It's born from experience. Someday I might even give you an example. This will have to do for now: behind all beauty, underneath each gleaming, lustrous surface, lies a record of suffering and pain. You don't even have to delve very deep."

"And if I don't want to? If I want to live in the world of beauty despite all that?"

"Then you're a useless slave wandering a world populated by monsters in masks."


	3. Chapter 3

_A Study of the Presentation of Hell and Damnation as a Recurring Theme Throughout English Literature  
_ _Some critics have claimed that up until the latter half of the play, Christopher Marlowe's Faustus remains redeemable: at any point, he may repent. It is only once he sleeps with a demon – 'Helen of Troy' – that he passes the point of no return. Sexual intercourse with a devil was viewed in Elizabethan times as a cardinal sin; therefore, it is here that Faustus' soul is forever lost..._

A rustle of movement interrupted my schoolwork.

With a startled yelp, I gave a jolt of surprise, nearly falling from my chair. There, looming behind me, stood the spirit. Presumably he had been reading over my shoulder.

Shock gave way to acute embarrassment as I battled with heavy blushes.

"I'm not about to ravish you, landlord," he smirked.

(In retrospect, a different essay topic might have been wiser.)

"I didn't mean..." I muttered, almost inaudibly.

"Define 'irredeemable'," he added, a touch more thoughtfully. He took a seat at the desk so that he was facing opposite me. He rested his chin on the tips of his fingers. They framed his face like ghostly tendrils of light.

"Irredeemable in the eyes of God," I said, knowing this would probably elicit an interesting diatribe. I set down my pen, preparing to listen.

"Tch. You're learning," he said, sardonically.

"So it seems."

A pause, during which we eyed each other, calmly. I expected him to begin, and he wished to prolong the suspense for a little longer – if only to ensure that his audience of one was adequately captivated.

"Faustus," he said, eventually, "defies God. He steps outside of God's sphere of influence – but, in doing so, he loses his protection. That's another thing, host. Step outside the structure and you're in a state of flux; life that once had order reverts to perpetual chaos. Moral codes are all false in the end, but they give you an imaginary balance. Only reject authority if you know you can handle losing that."

"Can Faustus handle it, do you think?"

"Initially."

"And then?"

"He tires. Weakens. Begs to be accepted once more."

"But it's no use."

"Not for the reasons you suggest; _they're_ irrelevant. Whatever gave you the impression that sex had anything to do with morality? Faustus can't repent because he doesn't want to. Not truly. He wants to be saved, yes. But he doesn't want to accept the laws of God that he flouted – so he can't reap the rewards." He smiled, sharklike. "No-one ever said a life without illusions wasn't hazardous."

"But you think it's preferable?"

"Of course. Better a short life, and clear sight, than a lengthy existence marked by limited thought."

I looked down at the table. Meditatively, I began shading the margins of the paper with short, feathery pen strokes. I could have sworn I felt the full weight of his gaze on me as I did so, but when I glanced up, he was focussed on some spot in the distance; I was viewed only by imaginary eyes.

Gently, I laid the pen to rest on the table.

It was one of those nondescript, depressingly uniform days towards the end of a holiday during which the time for justifiably postponing work has long since passed, but the resolve to actually do anything productive has been sapped by the act of making leisure a habit. Essentially, I was procrastinating.

He was still seated opposite. I kept my eyes averted, so I could not know this for sure, but I could sense a certain heaviness about the air – an _insistence _of sorts, emanating from the other end of the desk. This surmise was justified when a hand, so pale as to be luminescent, inched across the table and plucked the pen from in front of me. I looked up. He had snatched the paper, too. Experimentally, he began sketching small, abstract shapes, only vaguely discernable and completely unidentifiable.

"You've been handling it for a long time, haven't you?" I asked, softly.

He stiffened. Dropped the pen. "I'm too strong to cower before anything or anyone," he snarled. "Least of all authority."

Something must have possessed me. Compassion, perhaps. I reached out, meaning to pat him on the bone-like hand – a suicidal venture under normal circumstances, but never, under any circumstances, to be carried out with anything approaching _pity. _He remained motionless. Yet whatever strange impulse had gripped me seconds before suddenly released me from its clutches, and my arm stopped short. For an infinite moment of astonishing brevity, my fingertips grazed the edge of his palm.

It was his look of unadulterated shock that caused me to recoil violently. I mumbled something incomprehensible, and busied myself with my books. I expected a surge of vindictive fury by way of response, but one skittering peek at his face told me he was thrown far too much off balance to consider retaliation, or hostility. And all it had taken was gentleness.

He spoke, and his words came out oddly strangled. "Was that you crossing the boundary – or me?"

"I'm still within the structure."

"You're on its threshold," he whispered, slightly awed.

And then, recovering, _grinned: _the twisted leer of a devil's mirth.

That instant, something shifted. I had taken the first step onto the swaying bridge – or skimmed the precarious edge with the tips of my toes. It had been enough. The boundaries had been rendered transparent and frail: crystalline, light-emitting, faceted walls of glass – poised to shatter.

"Let me read to you," he said, not long after.

It had solidified into routine – reading aloud to one another. Sometimes, when he was in a particularly indulgent mood, we would read out plays, hurriedly allocating the parts and exploring different voices, motivations, mannerisms. He was both a stunning and a terrible actor. He would always play himself. He could not act – but he could convey his own feelings with such intensity that, if given the proper role, it amounted to the same thing. I would cast him as dark, insouciant or subversive characters: the obvious roles such as Bakunin, Prometheus, Hamlet – whilst I was the stoic, questioning Horatio, or pitiful, waiflike Ophelia. I would also select the not so immediately suitable parts for him, like Marat in _Marat/Sade, _which he handled with frightful aplomb– with me as the disillusioned Marquis, quietly revelling in the violent uproar of his own instigation. I once made him Henry Higgins, and, astonishingly, it worked. He said that my attempt at cockney was appalling, and it was. We would substitute the quick, fleet to-and-fro of our conversations with a pretend dialectic – and always, always, I was the doubter; he was the visionary.

"What do you want to read?" I asked.

He ran a thumb across the spines of every book on the shelf. I imagined them shivering. He paused. "This one?" he hazarded, indicating the title.

"That's a children's book. Reading it to you would be – just a little too whimsical. Even I have my limits."

"Doubtful," he muttered, with a twisted grin. "All right, host. Let's go onto the balcony, and I'll tell you a story of my own."

"No books on the balcony," I mumbled, challenging him to be more informative.

He gave me a disdainful glance. "Once upon a time," he said, flatly. "There was a young thief."

I met his eyes, and they were alive with the enormity of what he was about to disclose.

The balcony was a favourite haunt of ours, when we tired of the monotony of enclosed rooms, but still desired the privacy of isolation. It was large, with walls thick enough to sit on, feet dangling over the edge, kicking at the rough brick, overlooking the city – high enough to remain unnoticed by passersby. At present, it was slick with yesterday's rain, and shadowed by the promise of more. I didn't care – there was a certain freshness to the damp – and Bakura, in all likelihood, didn't notice.

I hoisted myself onto the edge of the wall, settling on the damp stone. As I did so, it occurred to me that we were about to reach the close of an era.

"The story's true, isn't it?" I asked, to make certain.

"Don't look so foreboding, host," he said, rolling his eyes. "You ready?"

"Go on."

"Once upon a time, there was a little boy who lived in a lovely little den of thieves named Kul-Elna..."

He didn't spare a detail, in that chilling, sprawling, unbelievable recount. But you know it, for the most part, don't you? It didn't differ wildly from the version of events you were given. It varied in tone, of course: his voice ranged from hoarse, nostalgic and oddly tender, to biting, furious and driven – as though some corrosive, bubbling ire within him was forcing the words out, imbuing them with that hatred. He told me of the destruction of Kul-Elna, recounting every moment of its fall, heightening each atrocity with writhing words of fire, blood, smoke and blades. I gave up on attempting to conjure the appropriate response to the onslaught, and just stared, focussed intently on his eyes-lips-narrative. He had drained me of all will to resist, and filled me with the events he recreated with such ghastly passion.

"And so, after years of nightmarish struggle, he clawed his way out of the charred wreckage of Kul-Elna that had subsumed his mind, and returned to the heart of the Empire as champion of corpses."

"Is that how it ends?" I murmured, lips stiff with rain and cold and disbelief, with no doubt as to the answer.

"Not even close."

He told me about his attack on the pillars of the throne, and the throne itself. He – an unrepentant outsider – come to topple their delicate order and fling their own hypocrisy in their stunned faces. He terrified them: a living spectre from the past; towering, spiteful and _fearless. _The antithesis to their surface-level moral absolutes. He waged war with the angels, shattering their unthinking piety, shaking their convictions by the foundations until they were left unjustifiable – yet still they stood, assured in their own right to dominance.

"You – he – didn't win. Did he," I asked, almost fearful of the inevitable response. I kept questioning the obvious, teasing him into distinct explanations – confirming my own terrified suspicions.

"Would _I _be here if he had? Use your brain, host."

"This is the part where you murder – I can tell."

"Of course. 'Evil' isn't just a synonym for 'brooding' – something has to differentiate it from the established structure. And that is the fact that there are depths to which the 'good' won't sink. I don't see them that way. It's not sinking; it's conquering uncharted territory."

"I don't mind, you know," I said – perhaps reaching out blindly for his hand, but encountering only dirt and rain.

He paused, and looked away, taking in the network of streets splayed out before us: the self-conscious corporate buildings to the right, catching the last flickers of a descending sun in their many windows; the indistinct mesh of people thronging various roads to the left. (Somewhere in the huddle of buildings lay Yugi's Grandpa's game shop.) The greying, cloud-blurred sky. The air, tinged with a slight haze.

"This is where it gets interesting," he said, with a monstrous tear of a grin I could tell he didn't quite feel – such mismatched, unnameable emotion behind the mask: ferocity, and wilful instability, and something both weathered and spoiling for a fight.

I found his hand in the gloom and grasped it boldly, lacing his uncooperative fingers with my own. The surge of warmth the contact brought forth surprised me; I had expected him to be all ice, and steel, and insubstantial air. Instead, there was fire enshrined in that cold shell – I could even detect the relentless beat of a pulse.

Step by step across the bridge, and _I _had initiated the contact.

As he spoke, the jagged tips of his fingernails dug into the flesh of my hand. I clung on tighter, past the discomfort, as though clutching at some slippery wedge of understanding. His words became urgent, as though desperate for some hint of reaction on my part. I supplied nothing but the faint pressure of fingers on heated skin.

"... He said he would kill them. Crush them all. It was a rash, ingenious move – upping the ante to odds his foe could never hope to match. In one heady, hideous instant of gleeful exhilaration, he knew he had skimmed the edge of victory, through momentum gained by his own supreme audacity. He had vied with the angels to reach the uppermost echelons of heaven's hierarchy – and soon he was to match God with anti-God."

"Anti-God...?"

"Zorc Necrophades. Demogorgon, surfacing from the void. But, as of yet, he doesn't stir. That's later."

"So tell it to me in order!"

"I will, host, so long as you listen," he said, with a flash of irritation. "I can't see anything in your eyes at the moment, and it makes communication very difficult."

"There's a lot going on behind them; they're just shuttered for the moment. Besides, what do you know of connection?"

He squeezed my hand all the more forcefully in reply. A thrill of anxiety and a chill of pain streamed down the tendons of my arm.

A faint drizzle misted over our faces, as the clouds gave way to the beginnings of rain. The sky, meanwhile, was on the cusp of darkness: the vague glow of evening blue began to press at the edges of the day. Cold nudged at my face and bare arms – whilst water nipped at the thin fabric of my T-shirt.

He plunged on, regardless – blind to the weather and perhaps comforted by the approaching dark.

I listened to the description of the Thief King's demise with growing desperation. Stop here, I kept urging him in my mind – or no, stop _here_, and it will be all right! Don't continue. A few more minutes. _Save him_. Rewrite history. Tell me he lives, and tell me he triumphs – you can do it, and it _is_ in your power – you are the narrator!

He couldn't change it – of course he couldn't. He couldn't alter a single aspect any more than I could lie to you and say that in the end he prevailed. (Now I really _am _jumping ahead, but you didn't come here to be surprised; you came here to be enlightened. Or perhaps you were just curious – who knows.)

"Gold," he said. "A flash of incendiary gold. And that was the last light he knew for years. The shadows had claimed him, marked him as their own – and now they devoured him."

"When did 'he' become you?"

He wore that snarling, spiteful look like a shield – or a weapon. "Identity isn't so stable," he replied, derisively.

I watched him, engulfed him with my eyes, scouring the surface of his face for an inch of that brash, arrogant, haughty Egyptian thief – but what I could detect was fused inextricably with the shape of the dusk that blurred his features. A shade, not a colour: at one with the very brush-strokes that pick out the features of the universe. A life perpetually unresolved – frozen mercilessly in that one moment of defeat.

A sudden rush of sympathy overpowered me. "Oh, _spirit. _Bakura." Did the name fit? Searching for an appropriate title was like squaring the circle, and our shared name seemed alien to my ears.

How do you pinpoint one moment out of a continuous fall? The only time that may be measured is the initial push – and the ultimate collision. But this – this was significant. It was not the beginning – I was soaring, mid-plummet – but it was a distinctive moment, perhaps the midpoint between precipice and chasm. _That _I felt as clearly as I could feel the rain on my cheeks or the scrape of his nails at my knuckles.

"I'm sorry," I whispered, and it barely sufficed. I freed my hand from his grip. Trembling, I reached out and brought it to his bloodless cheek.

Never make a movement without conviction. No, really. Particularly not when it entails connection. It seemed the obvious conclusion beforehand, and the thought of the motion sprang resolutely to the forefront of my mind, confident and effortless. But a tremulous hesitation rendered the physical action tentative, half-formed. Instead of a gentle, comforting caress, it became nervous and clumsy – a hasty, moth-wing flutter.

He caught the errant hand before it could break away, clasping it almost questioningly to the edge of his face.

And I was gone – banished from the certainty of light. It was then. It was _then. _

It was the moment I leaned forward, bringing my face fractionally closer to his. It was when I paused, unsure as to how I ought to continue, certain that faltering would lead him to twist away.

Instead, it produced an easy, feline smile. It brought his other arm to steal around my neck, subtle yet sure. A small tug, and there was wet hair splayed against my face, and immediate contact.

That kiss sealed my contract with the beguiling devil who was currently pressed to me, heartbeat ricocheting in harmony with mine.

It was astonishingly gentle – and incomparably sweet. Bakura had been savage with smouldering fury, but now he relaxed to accept the comfort I offered, holding me with such care that even _I _recognised my own fragility.

I had only ever kissed two other people before: one, a girl, and it had been nothing: mouth against mouth – what now? Nothing, no feeling, nothing further – and vast, crushing disappointment to follow. There had been a boy, too, several months later – and it was worse. Clumsy, repetitive wetness: an unpleasant ritual, or duty.

This – well. There was feeling. Light, and forbidden, and oh-so-brief. Stolen between moments in time: a short-lived respite from the fall. Or perhaps we descended together.

It still perplexed me – that he could be so careful. In that instant, I felt the potential of his power – the reminder that the arm looped so lightly about my neck could just as easily bend to snap it: this was simply the surface. But he kept that strength in check, just as he had kept to a strict distance before – and he even drew away of his own volition.

"So you've chosen," he said – eyes blazing, pulse pounding, still mingling with mine.

He was waiting for an answer.

With sudden force, I sank into his chest: arms at his shoulders, head curling comfortably under his chin.

I kept surprising him like that.

His arms snaked slowly around me as I closed my eyes. We were swathed in shadows; two figures, contentedly entwined amidst the darkening air.


	4. Chapter 4

A Study of the Presentation of Hell and Damnation as a Recurring Theme Throughout English Literature

_Blake did not see 'good' and 'evil' in the traditional sense of the words – nor did he subscribe to conventional notions of heaven and hell. For him, heaven represented rationality, whilst hell stood for irrationality and feeling: the former, without the latter to balance it, could be tyrannical. This precipitates a fascinating reading of Marlowe's Faustus. In making his deal with Mephistopheles, Faustus acts in a highly irrational manner – trading eternal joy for ephemeral pleasure. And yet, to his mind, the trade is justified. He appreciates the value of the fleeting and the logic-defying miraculous – and, in the end, all that he asks for is not forgiveness, but __more __time.

* * *

_________

You always thought I remained neutral, right? That I skirted the edges of the divide, as the impartial arbiter. That I existed in a sort of intellectual purgatory, shackled by the malevolent spirit – though strangely attracted to the same – lost in adoration for my friends, but hopelessly isolated. Cut off from meaningful connection by the weight of evil feeding on my mind and senses.

Well, that's part of it, but it's not the whole story.

After that moment on the balcony – an interlude stolen from time – I had, _de facto, _chosen my side. I accepted Bakura's vision and even ventured to aid him. I even _loved _– but it was a dark sort of love, like a rose twisted about my heart, thorns piercing deeper with every pulse. And yet – necessary.

He asked me to help, and I complied. I wondered if it had been part of some scheme all along. But that sort of thinking is too cynical for anyone to stand for long. Perhaps his entire behaviour had constituted some seductive ploy; what did it matter when I was already enamoured, and involuntarily? The worst role to play is the passive one; if I couldn't be Hamlet I would be Horatio, not Ophelia. I would collect his brilliant invectives, cutting rejoinders and scathing, unfathomable tirades – all of which dropped so easily from his lips like rain into my cupped hands.

In the days that followed, I constructed the intricate world he needed for that final role play. There was an almost unbearable sense of haste; I think, maybe, he did not have too much time left. Although it has to be said that a lot of the time he was improvising – that occasion with Otogi and the Puzzle, for instance. He had been seeking the opportunity, true, but as he later informed me, it was fortune which dictated most of the ensuing events. Suitable, given Otogi's love of dice – and chance.

There were points at which I refused to go further. I would never take an active role in his designs; I would simply build the playing field. There was always an implicit understanding that he would not hurt my friends, no matter what threats he issued. The Pharaoh was fair game, naturally, but after hearing Bakura's story, I could not bring myself to mourn for that_. _Not when, nominally, I had to choose an allegiance – and I was already standing arm and arm with the spirit on his side of the river bank.

(For all his urgency, he would still find the time to toy with my hair as I leaned over a particularly complex construction plan, or wind his arms around my neck as I painted each character design: lips pressed against my collarbone; breath warming the hollow of my throat. There were times when I stayed up for the best part of the night, patiently working; in the morning I would wake in the cage of his arms.)

He would tell me stories of Egypt, alive with danger, and decadence, and hot desert sands. I would strive to secure every detail in each fibre of the miniature world I was slowly constructing, working to achieve the utmost precision.

Those days were saturated with a rich, voluptuous sort of happiness, like the heavy scent of pine needles, or the muzzy, throbbing feeling associated with profound lack of sleep. The kind of contentedness accessible only to outcasts who have found refuge in one another. For a time, the only universe I knew was Bakura's shadow-cloaked labyrinth which I explored by the dim cast of day, sinking into his sheltered embraces at night – protected, for the present, from the insinuating claws of other, lesser demons.

We once spent the entire day lying in one position: Bakura propped up against the radiator, unaffected by its heat; me with my head resting in his lap; just talking. Slow, detached snippets of thought – the tail-ends of insight. Words drawn out to be measured, tossed lightly from side to side, and discarded at leisure:

"What made you different?" I asked.

"Sheer force of will. And you?"

"Compassion for a pariah."

And then:

"We're like driftwood, spirit."

"Maybe you. _I'm _the approaching tempest."

As he touched my eyelashes with nimble fingers, gentle as a slight breeze:

"Spirit, I should really get up. At least to get some food or something."

"Mmmr. Don't."

"All right then. Heh. You sound like a cat."

Tracing his hands across the line of my eyebrows, the soft underside of my jaw, mapping the contours of my face:

"It feels as though we're chasing after the same thread of meaning. It all flows into one – and there's no different route; just a variation on a theme."

"What theme, host?"

"The same as always. It all comes down to morality. Structure versus chaos. Heaven and hell. Big, fundamental ideas. I wish I could escape them!"

"Do you think that's all there is?"

"I do worry, sometimes."

"Then we'll destroy that monotony along with everything else."

"I don't find it boring – just overwhelming. Get stuck somewhere along the way, and you can't progress any further."

"Then we'll forge more paths than one. Violently, if necessary – and violence always is."

"Slash and burn our way through?"

"Something like that."

Warmth, and languidness, and fluttering fingers exploring my face – _and you, and me, and most importantly you, just here and now and everywhere at once, _and if we remained still enough, perhaps time would get tired and forget us, leaving to plague some other pair of persecuted lovers.

* * *

Our comparative tranquillity was shattered soon after. The day after I finished the game board, for that matter, with the perfect timing of either tragedy or farce.

Outside, in the crisp, clean air, he was whispering incessantly from the corner of my mind. Sharing a head was uncomfortable at best; he had a habit of deliberately chasing after my stray thoughts, cheerfully pouncing on the more disjointed or embarrassing ones, and conversing about them at length. Other times, his murmured words would snake their way through my consciousness like a verbal caress – which was, ultimately, very distracting. I felt as though I was viewing the rest of the world through a thin sheet of glass.

And clearly _that _observation had escaped.

_I'm not isolating you. I'm just being friendly, host._

[_Friendly_?]

_My, that was scathing. Do you still doubt that I'm your friend? I've taken great pains to make that – and more – abundantly clear. _

[I know. I'm grateful. I love you. You know that. But you're not going to lose me if you just let me connect with the real world for a little while!]

_Am I being selfish, then? Monopolising your attention?_

[... Yes.]

_Too bad. Love _is _selfish. Why do you think the evil love so much more frequently – and all the more intensely? _

[Love is _not _selfish. Well. Your kind is. There are two types – and the _normal _type can be selfless. Just look at Anzu, for crying out loud! She loves the Pharaoh without demanding anything.]

_And she'll be the first to cling onto him when it's time for him to leave. Heh. Would she die for him? I doubt it. After a while, self-preservation kicks in. Come on, host. You know better than this. I _taught _you better._

[Would you sacrifice _anything _for me? Anything at all?]

_Probably not. _

[And yet you expect me to sacrifice everything in order to join you.]

_You already have, voluntarily. And I'm selfish. Besides, the arrangement has a pleasing sort of symmetry to it, no? The symmetry of opposition. Everything and nothing._

[You're awful.]

_Love you too, host._

[But selfishly.]

_Selfishly, yes. _

[Doesn't count.]

_Does too._

"Ryou!"

* * *

Soon after that, reality was clouded with black and I found myself spiralling into the depths of my own mind. Pushed out. Thanks, spirit.

And yet – to this day, I don't know if it was deliberate – to my mild surprise, I did not relocate immediately to my soul room. I was still shrouded in black – and half aware of outside noise, half seeing my real surroundings. It was as though Bakura did not have the ability – or perhaps the inclination – to blot out every single part of my senses. I felt things second-hand: like a patient, half anaesthetised, but still conscious.

Like a faint beam of light, voices pierced through the fog, bleary and indistinct. I could not make out much. Snatches of phrases here and there. But I grasped the name '_Marik Ishtar' _and clung to it, determined that, should I forget everything else, I would hold onto that.

And suddenly there came a jagged bolt of pain, enough to shock my terrified spirit into the realms of full unconsciousness.

I 'woke' in my soul room, knees digging uncomfortably into its dusty undergrowth.

I had become accustomed to this place; at first, it was utterly perplexing, but after being shoved there so regularly and unceremoniously, it was difficult to stay bewildered. It had almost become a comfort – better than blackness.

The room itself – and I say this loosely, because it was technically outdoors – was a maze, composed of glossy, gnarled hedges spanning higher than anyone could ever climb. Their branches were studded with large, curling roses. At first the buds had been frail and milky white, but they had fast reverted to a deep, perfumed red upon blossoming.

I had spent hours at a time wandering the wild paths of this self-made labyrinth. Sometimes I reached a clearing I imagined to be at its heart; other times I trekked fruitlessly down identical pathways. Every time, the route was different, as though my mind was constantly constructing inventive, unconscious tricks to keep me occupied.

I set off, blindly selecting a direction. I remember being told that to find the exit to a maze, all you have to do is put your left hand on the left wall and keep walking. I had tried it before, and it never worked here, so I tended to operate on chance alone. It was soothing – the relentless tread of placid, unhurried feet. It allowed space for uninterrupted thought – and a rhythm to which I could adhere.

Occasionally, when I concentrated, I could locate a dull ache somewhere around my arm – but it was faint; a mere suggestion of pain. It worried me a little, but not unduly.

What disconcerted me more was what I kept hearing. Discreet, alien rustles. Occasionally, the snap of a twig. Once, I heard footsteps, and saw what might have been the flicker of a silhouette at the latest fork in the path, disappearing immediately into the abundant shadows. It was usually dark here – vaguely moonlit – and anyway, the maze walls would have effectively blocked out any sun.

But certainly there was someone here.

I could have sworn I spotted a flash of gold.

It became evident I had a follower. Their pursuit was less than discreet – calculatedly so, perhaps. And yet they were always careful to leave no clear signs, giving me no chance to catch them, and considerable leeway to attribute it all to my imagination.

I quickened my pace, now attempting to catch them; I knew they were just two turns ahead of me at the most. They seemed to sense this, and hurried to match my speed: the snaps and rustles became more urgent and frequent.

And soon I was running, sprinting, down the length of the maze, no longer certain of where I was going, but sure that my follower – intruder, spy, prey – would stay close.

My hurried breathing and pounding heart rose above all other sounds, along with the frustrated determination that I swear was nearly audible. So cut off was I in my bubble of effort and confusion that at the time I didn't notice any signs of motion until someone caught me by the shoulders from behind.

The resultant shock was instant, and palpable; I nearly shot into the air, I jumped so badly. My second instinct was to struggle, and I spun around, swinging my fist back in preparation to punch – when my arms were seized again –

"Host. _Host!"_

"S-spirit?"

Breathlessly, I fell limp in his hold, allowing my frantic breathing to subside. He tightened his grasp and pulled me closer, cupping my chin in his calming hands.

"I thought – Bakura, I thought –"

"Shh."

He was so sturdy, and collected. I felt a fool. No matter, for her had found me - although, frankly, I never have been particularly good at hiding. Far too lonely.

Anyway.


	5. Chapter 5

Slowly, he steered me to the left, hands resting at my shoulder. We entered a wide, circular clearing: the centre of the maze.

Strewn across the area were rose beds, and long stone benches on which I had spent many thoughtful hours of tranquillity. At the very centre rested a fountain. Its shape was of an angel with wide, crumbling wings, broken arms – a face corroded by moss and age. Water trickled from a bowl balanced precariously on his head. The rest of the space was sprinkled with statues. Big, grey, rotting things: crisp marble lines eroded by age and neglect. Some were angels; some were ordinary men and women in sturdy, studious Renaissance poses of contemplation. What wings the angels possessed were all battered and torn – jagged edges that could never really achieve flight – as though someone had taken it upon themselves to clip the feathers, maliciously trapping them on earth.

I turned to Bakura. "Why are we _both _here?" I asked, warily.

He answered me with a playful dart of a kiss. Its searing, sudden warmth was momentarily baffling.

I tried again. "What's going on? Am I in pain? I think I'm in pain."

Another kiss – this one more prolonged, more searching.

"Who were you talking to earli – mmph!"

That time, I didn't get to the end of the sentence.

"That's not going to stop me asking quest –"

I was silenced with finality; he kissed me with fervour, tangling his hands in my hair – and effectively cutting off any movement I might have made to break away. Carefully, of course. (Not that I was exactly complaining about this turn of events; previously, he had treated me like glass, kissing me with finesse, but lightly, almost innocently. I occasionally hinted that flesh and blood didn't disintegrate like spun sugar, and a little passion – or tongue – wasn't going to snap me in half. He appeared to have taken this to heart.)

He tasted of fire, and rain, and the approaching tempest. We stumbled together for a few precarious seconds until he pressed me against the base of one of the statues. Smooth marble scorched its cold into the ridges of my spine.

At length, he drew away. There was an inky light – a manic, hungry gleam to his eyes. (In them I could see no reflection of myself – just a writhing shadow at the centre.) It was that moment when I noted how _real _he seemed: not that wan, ethereal, stubborn-luminescence-made-flesh that I knew from the physical world, but an insistent, lifelike presence. Solid down to the tendons stretching in his neck; the calluses stark against his palm; the fevered flush of his cheeks.

The indomitable sense of his reality overwhelmed me like a forceful wave, leaving me drenched with its weight - melting away any questions that might have lingered in my mind.

Instead: "I hear crickets," I murmured, abstractedly. He ignored that.

"In the new world," he said, "the one I'm going to destroy for you, daylight will cease to obfuscate the truth."

(He did everything philosophically did my spirit – even _this _– with every motion or word importing great significance. Starved of an audience for so long, he used me as a mirror to his insight.)

"That's a paradox, and a wilful one," I replied, impatiently.

He tapped me on the nose, in mock reprimand, and we were back to fleeting butterfly-kisses.

In between, he continued to speak. "You _know_ 'reality' is only the surface, host," he chided. "Think of it as a veil. Everything you see, hear, touch –" a lingering kiss "- _think, _is cloaked by what they want you to feel, _expect _you to feel."

I could still hear crickets. Odd. (But then, why not?)

"The fabric of the veil is composed of false assumptions, misguided ideology and the blinkered habit of custom and tradition. It is threaded together by authority: bound up in different forms of rule, all illegitimate to a varying degree."

He abandoned my face and moved to tease at my neck with the soft flush of his lips and the occasional ticklish scrape of teeth. Pausing whenever I sighed, or giggled, to guarantee I wasn't too distracted, and that his speech had my full attention. It was as though he was trying to embed the memory within me: a tactile representation of his words, imprinting them on my skin through the recollection of his touch.

"At present, it is possible to see familiar shapes underneath the veil that one might assume are life's objective forms, half concealed, yet discernable. They too are misleading. Illusory."

"_You _may as well be an illusion," I murmured, half-thinking.

"And yet _I _will tear away the veil," he snarled back, startling me back into full attention. "Fling it away in a billow of iniquitous fabric to reveal the blackness – the void – that lurks within. Life without illusions is a life of shadows. Don't be fooled by normalcy, or the deceit of light."

"So what exists and what doesn't?" I felt as though I was sinking into a dark abyss of sensation and wonder. Nothing could startle me: it was simply new experience; new thoughts and desires to bathe me in splendour. It was a form of rapture, a form of release: allowing his words to move my thoughts, and relinquishing any hope of resistance. But still, despite it all, questioning; we never abandoned the dialectic.

"_Nothing _does. I'm talking about utter annihilation. Forget the objects within themselves. Forget identity. I will pare down existence to its bare essentials, and from the toppling of all preconceived notions will come no progress - no regression either – no moving relentlessly towards some ideal state of being: merely chaos. I'll eradicate all pattern."

"And then what?" The idea was riveting; it absorbed me.

"And then I shall rule. Not as a king, but as a force of nature. As the ultimate nothingness; the ultimate revealer. Only in the dark can we _see._"

"Through what?"

"Through blindness."

He shifted back a little, though I was still pinned to the statue. I wondered if it was man, woman or angel. Glancing towards the entrance, I heard a scurry of movement. There - _there_ - was the unmistakeable silhouette of a figure.

I tensed. "Who _is _that?"

"Shh." Bakura pressed a finger to my lips. "Ignore him." I caught him dart a resentful, frustrated half-glance towards the unknown man, though.

"I wish I could! Spirit! He's invading my head," I breathed, anguished, panic surfacing.

He trapped me in another of those silencing kisses: masterful and lover-like. What had brought this mood on? It was odd, virtually unfathomable.

Then, just as suddenly and almost as forcefully, he broke away. Releasing me, he said: "Time to go now. You stay here. He'll keep his distance, I reckon. Yes. He won't come into this clearing, I promise."

"Spirit, _wait!"_

But he had disappeared, melted away, swimming to the topmost layers of consciousness. I was left leaning against the statue, helplessly alone with the intruder at the edge of the circle.

"Leave me _alone!_" I yelled – fruitlessly, for he didn't move, just stood poised at the entrance. I sank to my knees, sobbing just a little. He_ left _me_. _He had no right to _do _that.

And yet, as I was about to realise, he had not succeeded in pushing me away completely. (I like to think that we had grown too close to fully isolate ourselves within a shared brain. But perhaps that is hoping for a little too much.)

The grass at my feet began to ripple; stalks turned smooth, turned fluid. I stepped hurriedly out of its path. There formed a glassy green pool, glistening with a misty sheen. Standing at its edge, I peered within.

It was like peeking at images through a cloudy layer of water. The shapes were dark, indistinct – distorted by the screen, and initially I could not make out what was happening. But then I recognised the one: recognised the familiar, feline gait of Bakura – Bakura in control of my body. He stood, at once confident and crazed, before scarcely visible opponents. Duel disk at his arm, and the spectres of blurred monsters between them.

This wasn't the ragged, alienated thief I knew – the bedraggled bundle of bones who flinched the first time I touched him. Nor was it the sleek, soft-voiced seducer, with the sensual eyes that flickered across my face, assessing the thoughts written there – and evocatively detailing the tapestry of evil. This was some jarring amalgamation of the two: unchained and feral, tearing into all opposition with fatal, beautiful abandon.

And blood. There was so much blood.

I watched him decimate foe after foe. I watched him maim, and tear, and kill – all softened by a pool of emerald water. I saw him at his most deadly.

And I was _not _afraid.

He seethed with devastating power – a vast, all-encompassing destructiveness that enthralled me. Having seen him at his most appalling, most brutal – I was not repulsed. I felt drawn to his strength: a moth to a smouldering flame; the watery earth to the blazing, unquenchable sun. No longer at a distance, I observed with more proximity – and complicity – than ever, revelling in the way he cut through all opposition; a sleek, razor-sharp knife through delicate foliage.

I _should_ have been afraid – disgusted – and yet, all I could see was the very epitome of beauty. True beauty that terrifies, and renders you awe-stricken. It was a form of intoxication. It was like hypnotism. It was like falling in love, or losing your mind, and it was inextricably tied up with _power._

It was the last few seconds of the fall; inches away from the endless abyss below.

Please don't look like that. This is the part you need to know in order to judge, you see. I could lie to you if you like. Would you like me to lie? No? All right. You get to hear the whole truth about me and him, then. Don't say I didn't... are you sure you still want to hear? I don't really like describing it. It feels too soon; it's something I can't bring to any kind of order in my mind. And I was infinitesimally younger then – well, OK, it's only been several years in reality – but that somehow serves to make it more distant.

This is no longer about falling in love with a demon, but about _becoming _the shadow of a demon myself. The story of me and Bakura treads the line between love and subsuming; the former held such an isolated selfishness – an obsession – that it blurred into assimilation; the blending of identity. I was lying when I said he wasn't a manifestation of my desires, although I didn't realise it at the time; physically he was his own being, but to all intents and purposes he was as much a part of me as my restless thoughts.


	6. Chapter 6

When I returned to full consciousness, I felt as though I moved through a dense haze; it was a struggle to form a coherent thought, or perform a decisive action. I was acutely aware of Bakura murmuring tender commands: telling me to act normally; to ignore that all-pervasive sense of an additional _intruder _in my head. I could scarcely breathe through the fog. Numbness seeped through to my bones. I obeyed, and maintained an appropriately cheerful veneer.

Then, he took control completely. I sat at the centre of the maze, kneeling beside the pool that showed me shadows of the real world. They had dimmed somewhat – I could not make out much of what was happening. Frustrating – for I knew Bakura was fighting. Cut off and confused as I had been from the outset, I could not suppress a flicker of resentment. Surely I had earned the right to a little clarity? There was nothing of import that he could possibly wish to hide; no need for any reticence. Not _now. _

I still surveyed the pool with avidity that bordered on hunger.

And, despite it all, I trusted him.

All of a sudden, some rapid, whirling force seized me. Impelled by its irresistible motion, I plunged through the pool, forcefully tunnelling through the layers of my mind until, abruptly, I emerged at the surface. But worse – as I travelled, I felt two hands enclose mine: soft, and brown, and nothing like Bakura's. Fearfully, I lifted my head to see angular eyes, scored with bold scars. They narrowed impishly at me, accompanied by a crooked, conceited half grin.

"Marik Ishtar," I spat, with something approaching enmity.

That seemed to discomfit him, dispelling his arrogance. The grin became more serious, less mischievous, and harsher. I drew in a shallow breath. He gave my hand a petulant squeeze and swung me through the passageway of my thoughts. Twisting and plunging in a dizzying gyre, I collided once more with the stinging air of the material world.

"Ryou!"

The numbness dispelled, pain assaulted me from every angle: my whole body, but in particular, my arm, was seized by an agonising pressure, as though doused in fire. A fierce wind sliced at me from all sides, whisking my hair about my face like the palpitations of frantic wings.

_Yugi...? Where am I...? Why am I...?_

I think I spoke, but it caused my throat to constrict until it choked me. Floating around in an aimless background hum were words, words, words – and I think I may have been pleading.

Above me loomed a monster, more terrifying than anything my imagination could conjure - serpentine head metres away from mine. Something in me froze at the sight; terror and pain rendered me incapable of movement.

_Once you step outside the structure, you lose the protection of God. You have to be able to handle that._

I couldn't handle it – not with some tyrannical beast of a crazed god poised to blast me apart: rending flesh from bone, as I had witnessed Bakura do; and I was sure my mind would shatter before my body encountered its fatal trial. The first to break would be the will to resist; the physical would inexorably follow.

And Bakura – I could _hear _him – but I was far too cowardly to call his name. And yet I couldn't withstand this – _knew _I could not; only he, or Yugi, could be my deliverance. _Or damnation, but what does it matter?_

God's gaping maw opened wide, and gave way to blinding radiance – but I was shielded from the light by a wiry silhouette: like a shadow puppet cast onto a dazzling template.

My demon, come to rescue me.

A burst of sun and a backlash of fire sent me sprawling, whilst a weight seemed to drop from my neck – but I was saved, shielded from celestial ire by one whose life's purpose had been to challenge and resist. The strength of his defiance was my armour.

And there was Yugi – oh, Yugi, like an angel whose wings remained intact: soft, and pearly and perfect – the antithesis of my mind's ravaged statues. Holding me upright. Elevating me. I was floating, flying, free – and the heavy chain that had tugged at my neck for longer than I could remember was gone. Like the albatross, it had dropped like lead – down, down into the abyss – and I was an ethereal speck of light on a dimmed horizon; glimmering with momentary brilliance, before vanishing into the infinitesimal gap between sea and sky.

* * *

I have no memories of what happened next. Literally none. One blank mass – as though they were deliberately blocked. I was sidelined after that: my mind completely ceased to operate. It was similar to the first few times the spirit had taken control: I was reduced to nothing; he had sole autonomy. I had thought it was impossible for him to do that anymore. We were far too close, far too much the same. Wishful thinking. But then, I was weakened – and he had Marik: bonds of fire and ice, silver and gold, twined together in tight, inaccessible harmony.

I must have slept dormant: the cast-off husk of a brain, serving as a passive shell for the beautiful spirits within. Their world was bound in a nutshell whilst I was the nightmare; I served as the bolted gate to my own solitude.

When I woke, my mind was far from empty. It was filled with my own thoughts: light, airy – _solitary. _No demon. No intruder. Just me – alone. The creaking door of a liberated prison.

I longed for the weight of the Ring to drag me down into hell once more. But there I was: myself, and nothing more.

That brief brush with flight was sickening.

No. I knew he would return to me. Somewhere, I felt him stir within me, even bereft of the Ring, our conduit. I was happy: the ordeal was over and he and I would be reunited: there was no other possible outcome. I resolved to enjoy my short holiday within the uncomplicated surface structure: laughing with Mai; relaxing with my friends, who returned shaken yet triumphant. I painted myself with the veneer of content – skilfully enough to deceive even myself, for the most part.

Then, as though led by some benevolent hand of fate, I was guided to the Ring again.

The instant the cord touched my neck, he was back. Looking ruffled, but confident: a brazen, rakish smile playing about his lips.

I nearly stumbled in my overwhelming haste to cross the space between us, as I caught him in my arms.

He responded by encircling me in his own, and I was clutching at his rumpled T-shirt, his hair, alternatively cupping his face and clasping my hands around his neck, shaking away irrelevant tears all the while. I pulled him down into kiss after deep, greedy kiss: striving to reconnect, to reintegrate him into myself. We dissolved into a frenzied blur of lips, and hands, and sighs – until, eventually, it subsided into a moment of calm.

He eased a hand under my chin, tilting my head up to face him.

"Host, you're leaking," he muttered. And brushed away a stray tear from my cheek.

I broke down, arrested by heavy, shuddering sobs, and hid my head and my relief in the curve between his shoulder and neck. "Make me your accomplice; make me anything, only don't make me be the victim," I said: words garbled; voice muffled and strained with tears.

Close to my ear, he said: "The shadows would devour you."

I looked up, reacquainting our eyes. "I can't be passive. I'll die first."

He pressed a kiss to the corner of my mouth. "You didn't think anything could actually _hurt _me, did you?" It contained more scorn than comfort. As such, it didn't help.

"Oh God!" I whispered, clinging on tighter.

He wrenched himself away. I flinched, startled. "God is the last person on whom you ought to be calling," he hissed. "You know _better than that."_

I held my composure this time, resisting the impulse to reach out for him again. Keeping my voice under firm control lest it waver, I said: "I won't be some sort of marionette for you. I want to be your partner. Your lieutenant. Your Beelzebub. And when you tear away the veil, I want to rule alongside you. I won't be neutral or weak any longer. Don't glare at me like that; I'm not afraid of you and I never was. It's time we were equal. It's time I was more than just your possession."

He laughed, and it seemed to have gained a grating kind of mania – as though he was not sure if he would ever stop, and didn't particularly care either way. An unearthly celebration of cruel mirth; a raucous, harrowing clamour.

"Are you quite done?" I snapped.

The chimes of his cackles receded. "I could ask you the same."

"I'm serious, spirit," I said, tone darkening.

"I'm not inclined to take you seriously, host. Do you genuinely believe you could match me for power?"

"Call me Ryou!" I burst out, angrily. "D-damn it!"

Quizzically, his head tilted. He took a step closer. I turned away, decisively.

A few seconds later, cool arms twined around my waist.

"Go away. I'm clearly not worth the effort," I muttered, sullenly. Willing the insistent tears away. I did not extricate myself, but simply froze where I stood.

He perched his chin on my shoulder. "Ryou," he murmured, the syllable long and languorous.

It was a small concession, but completely overpowering.

I closed my eyes and leaned into his hold. "_Bakura,_" I half-whispered, half-sighed. "Thank you."

We stayed like that for a few, tranquil seconds.

"Tell me I'm more than just your servant," I said, eyes still lidded. I was so _tired. _

A long pause. "You're much more than that," he said, evenly.

"You've never lied to me directly."

"And I never will."

"Tell me what happened while I was gone."

"All right," he promised.

* * *

That evening, when we were back in Domino, he touched a hand to my cheek and said: "I have some business to do."

"All right," I said, and retreated to my soul room. I hoped it wouldn't take the whole night; the reckoning was soon and I had much to say to him. A business deal of my own devising.

To my relief, it took barely half an hour.

After the business with the Millennium Eye, we sat in the living room for a while, side by side on the couch, talking of nothing: wisps of air. Restlessly – sleep was impossible, but the preparations were immaculate, and there was little else to do but be together. I let him fritter away precious slabs of time until I could scarcely stand it. In a moment of silence, sweeping away my fleeting misgivings – it was all or nothing, at so late a stage in the proceedings – I turned to face him properly.

"Bakura. King of Thieves. Spirit of the Ring." I allowed for a second to ensure he grasped the import of what I was about to say. He replied with an inquisitive glance from expectant eyes. "I challenge you to a game."

His eyebrows flew up, and I was reminded of how much I loved surprising him.

That said, it never lasted for long. A sly smile spread across his face like a hairline crack. "What sort of game did you have in mind?"

"I thought I'd give you the privilege of choosing," I replied, tense with anxiousness, and straining not to show it.

"Well," he said, still smiling. "It can't be Duel Monsters because you would almost certainly win. And it can't be a role play because I would _definitely _win."

"I wouldn't be so sure," I said, seriously.

"Nonetheless."

"Then _what?_"

"Do you play chess?" he asked. "What?" he added, in response to my startled glance. (I had been expecting cards; definitely cards; you can't really cheat at chess, and I had taken the notion of him cheating into account as a foregone conclusion.) "It has a pleasing symbolism. Black versus white; the age-old dichotomy."

True. Very true. And, of course, he would make me play as white.

"Perfect," I said, matching his expression with a grin of my own. My resemblance to either himself or perhaps Marik must have unnerved him, for he flinched almost imperceptibly.

"So what are the terms of this game... Ryou?"

I liked that. He was approaching me on relatively even footing.

"I was hoping you'd ask."

"Don't be cagey – it doesn't suit you," he said, dismissively.

"Oh, I think it does – a little."

"_Host,_" he growled, impatient.

"Don't call me that," I remonstrated, calmly. "I used to think it was a sweet nickname, but it's laden with a few too many connotations for comfort."

"Stop stalling," he said, voice punctuated by a note of distrust.

"All right," I said, sensing that I could only get away with so much repartee before he baulked. "Here's what I propose. If you win, everything will continue as planned. I'll stay your host – I'll be your earthly servant when you strip away the world to bare the shadows. I'll stick to the sidelines, out of the way in the corner of my head. Etcetera."

He nodded, slowly.

"However," I said, taking a steadying breath. "If I win – we are equals. I'll be your compatriot – your comrade. In the world of shadows, you and I will become one as the dominant force of the universe. We'll achieve total union, in a world with no illusions. One entity: _Bakura. _A tripartite coalition between you, me and the anti-God. If I win – I'm yours; no barriers."

He blinked. Once. Twice. Slowly. Deliberately. Tantalising me unfairly with his hesitation.

Then, he took pity – or so it seemed – and answered with confident satisfaction. "I accept your challenge _and_ your terms, Ryou Bakura."


	7. Chapter 7

**A/N: Please note that this chapter isn't the end! There will be an epilogue posted soon. For now... enjoy. :)**

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* * *

**

We sat at either side of the ivory chessboard my father had brought back from Egypt one year: my white cohorts against his black. I'll admit – chess has never been a game of which I am particularly fond, although these days it holds certain poignancy for me. Nevertheless, I am good at it. I'm not trying to be boastful – I mean, I'm hardly a champion or a prodigy – but I'm decent. Good. And I was then, too. I've always had a knack for looking ahead, predicting moves – so, as you can imagine, I took to chess quite easily. I'm only saying this because it explains why I was able to hold my own against Bakura.

Tentative and subtle, gossamer threads of rain whispered at the window. We played by the light of one flickering candle - flame tossing, writhing, seemingly snatched back by the shackle of its wick with each shuddering bid for freedom – because he had insisted on that. Atmosphere was everything, I suppose. He could never abide unnatural light; fire, he tolerated for its steadfast ferocity. Now and again, I would stop to observe the dust motes that danced in the haze of its faint light, or watched how it lengthened the shadows of the chess pieces so that they resembled the clustered bars of some inky cell.

And he was trying. To the best of his abilities, I think. No – I know. Anything else would have been wholly beneath his dignity. I can't tell you which outcome he most desired – but what I can say for sure is that he never played a game without the intention of victory. He usually accepted his losses with surprising composure – mostly because he was an inveterate schemer and always had a plan prepared for every outcome, save total annihilation. I suppose it was a lesson he learned back in Egypt.

At first, our only conversation was the muted _clunk _of the pieces – short, slight and eloquent in its own way. It was enough, to let the game progress, like passive observers to our own silent war.

He played recklessly, sacrificing pieces at every opportunity. Again, this explains why I was able to fight back with some success: I knew him; knew his strategy. As with his acting, he never played a game as anyone other than himself – and thus, the way he played chess was identical to the way he played Duel Monsters. Again, that gave me an advantage: he was predictable.

Candlelit, he was exquisite: so pale as to be preternatural; eyes iridescent with a volatile gleam. Like the edge of a knife, reflecting the moon. He sat with a predatory stillness, poised in anticipation of something – perhaps the storm. Too bad, for what rain there was had petered out, and the night donned tranquillity like a veil.

I don't think I was predictable at all. I watched him scrutinise my every motion, meeting his gaze with a forced steadiness; he was attempting to analyse me, and not quite managing. I imagine he expected me to be cautious. I was not. I wasn't hot-headed or ruthless like him, either – I played a balanced game, with varied tactics. My ultimate aim was to go for the unexpected moves; my only chance of survival lay in conforming to no dissectible style. He may have been predictable, but he was also highly skilled.

And yet, despite it all, we were evenly matched. For all of an hour or so, I was his equal – his rival, no less – taking part in a finely balanced intellectual tussle.

"You know, this game is nowhere near as complex as Duel Monsters," he muttered, about halfway through. "There are a finite amount of possibilities." He gave a contemptuous snarl. "Tch. Limitations." Frankly, that last comment was unnecessary – to say nothing of somewhat half-hearted. A fool could tell he was enjoying himself immensely - for one thing, he was never one to hide emotion; he always let it flit over his face without filter or restraint. No, he never lied – not directly.

I tilted my head quizzically to one side, giving the criticism consideration anyway. "You may be right," I said. "But then – I think it's more difficult that way. If there's a limited amount of moves, you have to think harder to come up with an original strategy."

"It's flawed," he insisted, heatedly. "There's no opportunity for growth – or even regression."

He hated anything that wasn't chaos; it was an affront to his philosophy. Entropy was his element: malleable pandemonium.

"That's the point. I think. Check, by the way."

Glibly, he moved his King out of danger. I renewed the assault, pressing my brief gain for all it was worth. We were entering the early stages of cat-and-mouse, with only a few major players left apiece, and an increasingly tight situation on both counts. We battled through the silence like turmoil in a crystal ball; a distant, sheltered scene, where armies wage mute war against one another, shrouded by a pane of glass.

"You're winning," I said, coolly. "This is where the game gets repetitive."

"Don't be ridiculous," he said, matching my tone, eyes alight with sudden humour. "This is where the possibilities increase." I could sense an almost primal delight – an intuitive thirst for the approaching confrontation.

So much for that half-hearted attempt at emotional warfare. But I wasn't done yet.

"You know, Bakura, we play in astonishingly similar ways."

"We're polar opposites, host," he said, dismissively, toying idly with a pawn.

"I keep telling you to stop that," I said, keeping my voice as toneless as I dared. "I'm not an empty shell, and you're no parasite."

"Why the sudden aversion?" he asked, swiftly. Every move he made these days was predatory, abrupt. "You used to tolerate it. How did you change?"

"I realised the implications of servitude." Every word I uttered was measured, unrushed. The dark, and the candle's flicker, the shadow-grating of the chess pieces and the cool, shielded conversation ushered my thoughts to confessionals.

"No, you always knew _that. _Now suddenly you mind." His jaw tightened a little. "I want to know why."

"It bothers you?"

"Yes, actually," he said, scowling. "You're touchy, and cool, and demanding all of a sudden. People change, constantly, inevitably - but you were always relatively stable." A touch of peevishness seemed to signify the presence of some wound. I had broken something; shattered... something. Habit, or trust, or our fortress-like prism of a world.

"I'm still the same, really," I said, softening a little, allowing some warmth to creep back into my voice. "I just learned what it was like to be genuinely helpless and afraid. You never scared me. _God _did. I won't let weakness overpower me like that again – I'll find a way around it."

"How?" he demanded, sharply. "_This_?"

I peered up at him. Blinked. "Checkmate," I said, simply.

"... _What_."

I wondered if I ought to repeat the word. It was difficult for me to take in too, so I understood his incomprehension well. Nonetheless, the fact remained that I... had won. I'll admit, it's a moment I rather like to remember: the time I beat him, fair and square, and all the other silly sayings that apply. My veins seemed to hum with a heady exhilaration; I swallowed against the insistent thud of my pulse.

He didn't look angry. Not at all. I think he forgot to be affronted. He looked bemused, and slightly punch-drunk, and oddly... proud? Satisfied? Honestly, I couldn't say for sure; I can only give you what I surmised and hoped. There was a flash of something inexplicable in his expression – something that was not negative at all, but was impossible to pin down or specify. A sharp-edged hunger, or a bewildered kind of admiration.

In one fluid motion, he swept his hand across the board, allowing the black King to topple. "Long live the revolution," he whispered, wryly. "It's prophetic."

"Either way a King would fall," I reminded him. "There's no surprise."

"Yes; the odds are rather weighted in my favour," he smirked.

"_Ours,_" I corrected. Inwardly, I was appalled by my own audacity; the blood roared ominously in my ears, but outwardly, I did not even tremble. I was self-contained in my shell of jubilant terror.

His face changed – darkened. The traces of mirth drained away, and a decisive kind of seriousness flooded in, with a diabolical tinge that was not lost on me. "Ours," he agreed, in a solemn, rasping whisper.

Somewhere amongst all this, we had both stood. Now, suppressing all timidity and surprising even myself, I stepped closer until our shadows overlapped and my palms were resting lightly on his chest, like slumbering birds. "You lost," I said, firmly. "It's time to claim your prize."

He moved with unexpected alacrity, seizing me by my shirt front and pulling me into a crushing, biting kiss. It was nothing like before, where his actions had been elegant, romantic – this was rough, and dizzying, and breathtaking: product of the sublime monster I had glimpsed two nights previously. Swept away by a torrent that obliterated everything outside the space of our shaken snow globe, our oasis of mayhem – it was all I could do to hold on to myself. Thought and identity had been the first to be swept away; this was him and me _and we are one and the same, and utterly lost. _

He relaxed, briefly, allowing me the chance to catch my breath. Hand darting downwards, seeking the waistband of my jeans, he murmured: "Can you handle it?" And waited for the reply.

No hesitation. "_Yes_."

* * *

The next morning, I went through the motions of ordinary life, feeling ever more like a double being. There was surface-Ryou, who went to school and had friends with whom he played games, and was, at best, a harmless spectator in the battle between hierarchy and anarchy. Then there was the hidden Ryou, who had sealed his contract with the devil for good - Ryou who had woken tangled in the arms of the wayward King of Thieves, who in turn had not been gentle, not at all, but that had been all right.

For him, the world had unravelled – had burst into transcendental flares; he stood, unwavering, on the precipice of nothing, and confronted the void with the colossal inferno of rebellion; the calamitous avalanche of fragmented existence. He and his shadow, spirit, master, has experienced a vivid taste of the immanent revolution – shuddered when stricken by the waves of magnificent destruction. The mere shadow of things to come.

Surface-Ryou did not react when he was told he had darkness in his heart, and therefore could not enter the Pharaoh's memories, for he had no comprehension of the full implications, and vaguely blamed the spirit residing in him. The real Ryou was wracked with strangled, angry sobs as he dashed away towards the back room of the museum. He was singled out, alienated: no less of a pariah than his tenant, for the evil which Bobosa had located was as much a part of him as anything else. A disease that felt like the spread of salvation. And, mostly, he cried because he knew he would not be blamed or even suspected; he would be forgiven on the basis of events that spiralled completely out of his control. He wrestled with the wretched tears because he could feel the _helplessness _surging through him once more, just when he thought he would never be weak again. And he was granted few words of comfort by the spirit, who had accepted him as an equal and would withdraw his support accordingly – who, after all, had been through all of this before, and had little sympathy for one who was new to the world's outraged contempt.

I would have coped better had I actually been demonised. My friends were far too trusting and loyal to condemn me – or even to consider that I may have been anything less than innocent. I was the little boy lost; the soft little lamb tottering to the slaughter.

I also wept because they had abandoned any hope of neutrality. Like me, they had chosen a side; they had entered willingly into the fray, and I could offer them no safeguard. I could only hope that Bakura would, perhaps out of faithfulness to me, overlook them – but they had provoked him, and he would find that difficult to ignore. I was powerless to intervene, for I was now chained to my damnation: I had chosen, and either could not or would not repent. And yet, I was certain that their spirits could enter our new world of shadows unscathed; with the powers granted to me by Bakura and by Zorc Necrophades, I would almost certainly be able to ensure that they lived - whatever happened during this conflict. It was not for entirely selfish reasons that I had succumbed. It was for love, friendship, _truth, _freedom –

_It was the allure of power, Ryou, and you're a fool to think otherwise._

[No. No, I can tell you without hesitation that it _wasn't that._]

_You're a moral outsider now; you can't think in such sanctimonious terms any longer. We're not the same as them. They can wallow in their pretty, duplicitous little absolutes; we'll taint them, poison them with our contradictions. You are _mine, _Ryou – that was the deal, and it was consolidated at your own bidding. _

[I'm not doing this because I'm evil. That word may as well not exist: it's meaningless; an arbitrary pinpoint on a skewed perspective. I'm doing it for wisdom. For the principle that nothing is objectively right and no-one has the authority to impose values upon nature.]

_Wisdom is a perfectly valid motivation. Now help me get everything into position._

Here's something you didn't know: it wasn't just the spirit who was conscious during that final battle. We shared this body's senses – he had the one eye and I had the other. It was closer and more balanced than we had ever been before; synchronised perfectly in one dual existence. Not completely – he had full control of speech, but that was only because I chose to remain silent. And all the time I was whispering advice and tactics in his ear, reminding him to pay attention to one detail or the other.

And then there was the realisation – the moment when the Pharaoh woke and unwittingly confronted me with my own treachery. Still I stood firm. I would have ignored Bakura when he tauntingly dangled the supposed fate of my friends like bait in front of us both: he was antagonising his nemesis, but testing me. I knew he would not have the power to stop me from saving them once we ripped away life's veneer. I would find them – with ease. If anything, he was teasing; with my newfound devil's humour, I almost laughed.

No, what riled me was what he said beforehand.

"I made my host build this in anticipation of our final duel."

Anger exploded in my head; Bakura must have felt the disruption, for I was seeing furious sparks.

[Don't you dare say I was forced! Don't you _dare _belittle me! I am not just your host, and there was no coercion whatsoever! Are you too _frightened _to admit you weren't alone? Is it _pride? _Or are you trying to diminish me again?]

_Let's get back to the game, Ryou._

I could not press the matter – not so close to the finish; I let the matter drop, knowing that, in time, he would respect me. I would make sure of that.

I have run the scenario through my mind so many times. I have developed a handful of possible theories. One: he was deliberately teasing me, trying to assert his dominance. But if so, why did he acquiesce to my challenge in the first place? Two: it was bravado in front of the Pharaoh. It really hadn't crossed his mind that I would be so furious. Equally hard to believe. He was too perceptive; he could read me like an open book – one he had partially written himself.

Three: he was giving me an out.

No. It's unlikely. But nonetheless, let's entertain folly for a second – what if, despite all his outward confidence, he had considered the possibility of failure? And what if he wanted to ensure I would be safe in the aftermath? Without him, I had no hope of defence. Maybe he didn't want to see me destroyed, so he perpetuated the notion of my innocence.

Or perhaps it was simply his last laugh.

Whatever.

We were doomed to lose; of course we were doomed to lose. The universe will never relinquish its laws in response to a fair game. No such thing. Bakura; he was simply better at cheating than most – as a consequence, he survived for longer outside its domain, making structural anarchy his element. _I fought the law, and... _look; there's a pattern; you can _see _it. That is if it's not just the illusion of light. I wish I could find the words to describe those final moments, in which we both knew we had been crushed, vanquished; in which there was an oasis of stability before the atmosphere met with a deafening shift. All I am able to relate is fragmentary, desperate – the inchoate, incoherent snatches of all that should be and might be and will never be said; a double stream of anguished consciousness. So muddled and chaotic that I can scarcely tell you who said what; only that our mental connection was a twisting myriad of last words and recollections.

_Love is selfish – step outside the structure – love you – selfishly – tear the veil – can you handle it – I always could – the veil is torn – not afraid of you – terrified of you – last few – hold on please – can you handle it – crossing the barrier – there was no barrier – you're mine – I always was – light flooding me choking me – reasserting its authority – self preservation – a distraction – monsters in masks - step outside the – I'm yours – chains prisons vessels – much more than that – promise – never lied – sympathy for a pariah – you know better than that – step outside – step -_

Twined together in a double plummet, we finally met with the ground.

And the resultant fallout was spectacular.

Flakes of light exploded in great bursts across my eyes, pelting me with radiant shrapnel. The heat and force seemed to drive my brain from its skull – the full-blown vengeance of god, melting me, dissolving me, subsuming me in its volcanic glare and leaving only particles of flesh in its wake.

[_Bakura!_]

That mental shriek emerged mangled and desperate, as though torn from the shredded fabric of my being.

The flares receded and the searing agony ebbed away, leaving me a lonely, fluttering voice in the vast, white silence.

[Bakura? Don't leave! _Don't go! _It wasn't just – it wasn't right – it wasn't an equal match! Stay! Please stay!]

I kept urging him with the same pitiful plea: _stay. Please stay. _And yet, I could feel him disintegrating within me; his mind was unravelling, collapsing in upon itself.

[They never wanted you to live. Nobody let you be. They weren't satisfied with anything less than a negation of you. But that's changed! It changed the moment you read to me, and over the course of time as I gradually let you in. _I_ want you! You're not universally despised – _I love you. _That's why you _have _to exist!]

Poor little Ryou: reduced to a wailing voice in the lonely abyss.

For a few frightening moments, I thought that this was all existence had to offer me. But, just as the time before, I was redeemed.

I tried to hold on – to reject my deliverance and spite god – but nothing could prevent me from waking into the world of light.

Some people are born to be saved.


	8. Chapter 8

**A/N: Hey, guys! Thought I'd add an epilogue of sorts. Thank you so much to everyone who has read this - and particular thanks to those who have reviewed and favourited! You are awesome. Thank you for sticking with this for so long. :)**

**In other news, there won't be a sequel for _Doors, _per se, but I do intend to write more in this 'verse. Possibly something Marik-centric; who knows? Enjoy! **

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There are some experiences from which you cannot fully recover. There are also some paths which, once chosen, cannot be abandoned. Bad metaphor. That implies you can turn round, which you can't. Think of it as speeding down a motorway: a long, one-track road, completely irreversible, winding towards some unknown destination.

I'm not sure what else to tell you. It's been a year since that trip to Egypt, when Atem departed for the afterlife. I wasn't surprised to see no trace of Bakura behind those doors. He may as well have been forgotten; it was far safer that way.

_Dear Amane,_

_I'm sorry I haven't been writing so frequently. I haven't been avoiding you, I swear. I just didn't want you to worry. You'll hate me for this, but you were always much too innocent to trouble with deadly things like defying God. Don't laugh! I can tell you're laughing. Silly. It's so very, very important, though._

_(I hope God's not reading over your shoulder right now, in heaven. That would be awkward! It would be like getting you into trouble with your boss, or your landl -_

Living again was a difficult task for all of us. Yugi tried to project an aura of cheer, trying to persuade us that it was all for the best, and it was the Pharaoh's time to move on, whilst failing to convince himself. He got better, though. Anzu was an inspiration. Bakura had been completely wrong; gently, and with regretful resolve, she let go of Atem, lovingly allowing him to sink into memory. Lending Yugi all the consolation he needed. She may not have been in love with him as she was in love with his shadow self, but she gave him all the support of a best friend. In those first few weeks, she and Jonouchi scarcely left his side, taking it in turns to hold a constant vigil over him, day and night. Eventually it worked; he eased back into himself again. Shizuka, to the surprise of everyone, took it up with Mai of all people – much to the dismay of Otogi and Honda, who promptly turned their spurned affections to Ishizu. The point is, we all found solace in each other. Even Kaiba didn't shut himself off: Jonouchi wouldn't let him, and Mokuba encouraged any contact with the outside world. I think he suffered for want of a rival, though he would never admit to that kind of feeble dependency. Luckily, he found a replacement challenger in the former.

As for Marik, I'm not entirely sure how he got by during those first few drab, dreadful months. He could have been at university. He could have been in Egypt, or even Japan, with his siblings – hell, he could have been a cat burglar or a terrorist for all I knew. I kept thinking I ought to track him down. He, at least, knew the dark splendour of Bakura – and, who knows, may even have been yearning for some reminder, some living trace of him, almost as badly as me.

_Dear Amane,_

_There are times when I wondered if all he needed was some sympathy and compassion. He'd been disconnected for long enough to drive anyone mad – and he'd experienced truths that possess one, turn one insane with their sublime horror. Why should he have had to face it alone...?_

And me? And me. Huh. I'm not sure where to begin. I've become quieter, more introverted – mostly due to the pressure of keeping so much concealed below the surface. It doesn't show much; my friends all assume it's residual tranquillity after all the trauma I had to endure. They think it's stoicism. It _is, _in a sense – but it's due to suppressing the disillusion within me: I've become a living representation of the world; veiled and distorted by light. I lurk in the darkness like a vampire.

But I've realised where Bakura went wrong and it's all thanks to observing my friends, whom I love like a sailor loves the stars: distant, and blazing with untouchable radiance. I've realised just how much people matter. That was Bakura's stumbling block – he comprehended the abhorrence of the structure, but he overlooked the beauty of people. I'm looking to change the world without hurting anyone. I'll throw stones at the tyrants, but I'll take heed of the crowd. People _matter. _Collective social bonds are more important than one individual. The egotist never prevails.

I wish I could tell him all of this. Lean close and I'll let you in on a secret: _I think that, someday, I will. _

It started quite recently. Immediately following his defeat, I felt nothing in my mind. It was an empty vessel; I was numb to even my own presence. I was a hollow vase. A glove puppet, left abandoned on the counter.

Gradually, I began to fill out the corners of my brain; life crept into the dull contours of my vacated body. It was an arduous task, relearning how to be the sole inhabitant of myself. Eventually, by soaking up the bittersweet content of my friends, I began to feel again. The blankness of the void ceased to touch me.

And then began the crying jags. With feeling came floods of pain. Every night, I would soak my pillow with torrents of tears, muffling my shameful sobs. But that was OK because it was something that had to happen before I could ever heal. When it hit its peak, I started crying during the day, too. On trips out with Yugi and the rest, I would frequently disappear to the bathroom whenever I felt that miserable wave rush over me; I bought endless packets of moisturiser to mask the redness around my lashes and applied a continuous layer of concealer to the shadows underneath my eyes (like the inner darkness peering through.) The deception succeeded; I doubt anyone ever suspected. They trusted my honesty, took no heed of my duplicity.

After it peaked, it improved. The tears eventually dried. It was like recovering from a tortuous, prolonged bout of 'flu; exhaustion followed, but it did not linger for long.

_Dear Amane,_

_I'm better now, I promise. I'm sorry for the last few letters; they were selfish..._

Soon after what I now think of as the beginning of the partial return to myself, I _did _get back in touch with Marik. A chance meeting with Ishizu at an art exhibition led to the discovery of his address. He and I struck up what I suppose you could call a relationship. The first _real _one I have ever experienced. We were plagued by a dull, pervasive blur of discontent together – but it wasn't because of each other. No, we both knew that we would have been far more miserable on our own. Like recovering alcoholics, we clung to one another, and the pangs lessened with every feverish embrace.

Marik mesmerised me. Knocking on his dorm room that first day (as it turns out, he had been studying Philosophy at a university not overly far from Domino) I had been expecting a sleek, manipulative demon. Instead, I found – a teenager. A temperamental, mercurial, insanely intelligent teenager, all bound up in bitterness – but, nonetheless, this was just a kid my age, struggling to cope with the clinging fingers of the ghostlike past that curled around his limbs as tightly and insinuatingly as they did mine. Albeit a phenomenally beautiful kid.

_Dear Amane,_

_I think I've found deliverance. He moves like happiness and he tastes like hope. And yet he's been wounded, so very badly..._

Eventually, he broke free – escaped the greedy clutches of his legacy. I watched it happen, with deepening joy; watched the clouds disperse from his face until it was swept clean, earnest and buoyant. I... did not escape; not exactly. Outwardly, I was much better. Inwardly I was something of a wreck. At any rate, we eventually left each other through mutual, friendly agreement. It was only when he cleared out the remainder of his belongings from my flat (I was studying Art at university, but my father paid for private lodgings) that I realised how profoundly happy I had actually been. I was not resentful of the loss. In fact, I was pleased that I still had the capacity for that kind of feeling.

And it was then that something other than myself bushed the corners of my mind once more, laughing as the bewildered synapses seemed to tremble at the notion.

Perhaps he had been building up his strength until now. Perhaps he had simply been waiting for me to do the same. Either way – I think he still lives within me, and I also think I know why.

It began with the ever-present feeling of being watched when I was alone – watched from within. The sense of a faithful listener to my thoughts and emotions. The comforting presence of another entity.

His face would flash briefly before me every time I closed my eyes, fast enough to have been an illusion. In those hazy moments between waking and sleep, I felt the vaguest touch of ghostly arms about my waist. And the dreams – oh, he would visit my dreams every night, wordlessly pressing hot, lingering kisses to my mouth, eyes striving for some sense of communication.

So you see, I think a fragment of him lives on, outside the Millennium Ring. I think he implanted a shard of his soul within _me. _And I think he is growing stronger with every passing day.

Soon, I expect to talk to him. I wait, and hope, and search for any hint of him within my mind, my soul room – my sleep. I chase through the maze, marking every path. Sometimes when I'm alone in a room, I will call out to him aloud – _Bakura! – _in hope of some distant response.

It hasn't happened yet. But then, he always did have to be summoned from within.

When it comes down to it, I wanted him so badly he was forced to exist. I'm not letting him rest because I know he doesn't want that. He wants to return; I can feel it. And, inevitably as the tide, the phases of the moon, death, taxes, Monday morning – he _will. _

For now, I eagerly await your judgement.


End file.
